Apparently Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, is the most powerful man in Britain. A poll of listeners to the Radio 4 Today programme said so, so it must be true.

It is certainly the case that the Commission has the monopoly on proposing the legislation that makes up the single market, and that it is has the responsibility to promote the common European interest rather than the sectional interest of any member state, but even an arch-Europhile like me wouldn’t say that this is the biggest concentration of power in the country. Tony Blair came 7th in the poll and Gordon Brown 9th, which the latter must hate.

He’s not wrong, but that’s not the whole story. There is one person mentioned in that last paragraph who did get to vote for or against Mr Barroso, and that is Roger Knapman himself (according to Article 214(2) of the consolidated treaty, the European Parliament has to approve or reject the choice of president made by the European Council). Let’s go further and ask who got to vote for Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. The voters in Sedgefield and Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath, obviously, and the members of the House of Commons who support or oppose the government, but anyone else? Neither was a candidate in the constituency where I live.

The best way to sort this out, though, would be to give Mr Barroso, or rather his successor, a clearer mandate. What if each of the parties that contested the European elections in 2009 each nominated a candidate for president of the Commission? They already draw up Europe-wide manifestos so choosing a candidate should be no problem for them. The voters then could take into account the different candidates when deciding how to vote. We say goodbye forever to the complaint that the Commission president is unelected, and a good thing too.

¤ ¤ ¤

Take another look at that BBC list. In second place is Rupert Murdoch and in 6th place, Terry Leahy, boss of Tesco. Nobody got to vote for them, not even Roger Knapman. How does UKIP propose to deal with this?